U.S. President Barack Obama's 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the Group of 20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) helped put the spotlight on Asia's security challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and its neighbors have spread all over the regional geopolitical landscape.
Obama significantly restricted his tour to Asia's leading democracies — India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea — that circle China and are central to managing China's rise. Yet he spent the whole of last year assiduously courting Beijing in the hope that he could make China a global partner on global issues ranging from climate change to trade and financial issues. The catchphrase coined by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, "strategic reassurance," actually signaled a U.S. intent to be more accommodative of China's ambitions — a message reinforced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she went out of her way to downgrade human rights during a visit to Beijing. Obama, for his part, declared that America's "most important bilateral relationship in the world" is with China.
Now, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted — to line up partners and thereby build an insurance policy in case China's rising power slides into arrogance.